


a few glow in the dark moments

by likewinning



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-21
Updated: 2010-04-21
Packaged: 2018-01-26 01:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,582
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1669604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likewinning/pseuds/likewinning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU from 5x01 on. <em>...when she turns her head there's just a girl, blonde and pretty and <strong>small</strong>, holding a rifle like it's the only thing she's ever <strong>been</strong> able to hold on to.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	a few glow in the dark moments

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Mariee Sioux.

Sarah Blake is only loosely familiar with firearms. Her father owned a few when she was young, because they were expensive and looked nice on mantelpieces and behind glass cases, but the fall that Sarah turned twelve and her mother went away for the first time, suddenly all the World War I rifles, the Civil War relics, the handgun in her father’s desk drawer – each one disappeared to the highest bidder.

She never missed them.

She does now, a little, at this moment, when she’s the last one cowering in the booth of a diner in Gardner, Massachusetts, because apparently she’s a magnet for paranormal activity these days and said activity likes hashed browns and coffee just as much as the next person – especially if the next person is dead.

There’s a shot from behind her, something like what Sarah imagined cannons sound like from up close, but when she turns her head there’s just a girl, blonde and pretty and _small_ , holding a rifle like it’s the only thing she’s ever _been_ able to hold on to.

“You really think that’s going to stop them?” Sarah isn’t sure how she has the breath or the mindset to ask, but the guys in this diner aren’t – they’re _things_ , definitely, and the one the girl shot is hissing and spitting but he’s alive as he ever was.

“Rock salt,” the girl says, like that’s everything Sarah needs to know. And just like that the girl’s turned back to the task at hand and she’s spitting out what Sarah’s pretty sure is Latin and the things left in the diner are shouting, running, and there’s black smoke and _noise_ and Sarah can’t see much but two booted feet in front of her.

It’s a weird day, to say the least.

*

As soon as the smoke clears, Jo’s out of the diner and headed to her car. Demons have been hitting small places like this one left and right lately, probably having all the fun they can while Lucifer sets up his next plan. She and Ellen have split again; just because there’s an apocalypse doesn’t mean they don’t need their space here and there.

And anyway, Jo’s stronger than before. She was late to this party, sure, only made it in soon enough to save a few people, but it’s better than nothing, and Jo packs up the trunk quick so she can get moving.

“Hey, wait!” someone shouts, and Jo turns toward the sound.

It’s the girl from the diner, the one who seemed to know a little more than everyone else if the salt she’d spilled all over her table was any indication, and there’s a cut on her lip and soot on her cheeks, but she still looks more put-together than Jo’s been in years, nice clothes and good shoes and a look to her eyes like she’s seen things, but not much.

She’s pretty, too. Long brown hair and big hazel eyes and Jo can’t remember the last time she noticed anything like that.

Jo waits, one hand on the knife in her back pocket in case, because demons swoop in fast as they please. She’s learned and learned and learned all that; it’s nothing you can be told.

“I’m Sarah,” the girl says, brushing a stray wisp of hair out of her eyes as she does. “You kind of saved me back there,” she says. “I mean, you _did_.”

“Jo,” she replies, and then shrugs. “Don’t worry about it.” Gratitude makes her uncomfortable; she’s just not the kind of hunter that waits around for hand-outs, especially these days, but Sarah doesn’t leave. She seems to be searching for words, even as she brushes more hair off her face and pulls at her clothes, like there’s something left on them she can’t see. It takes her a while, but she finally asks, “What were those? I’ve seen things, but not…”

“Demons,” Jo tells her. She’s never given the speech before, really, all her time hunting, and she doesn’t think she has to now – not completely. “They possess people. All that black smoke? That’s what you see before you get possessed.”

“And you shot at them.”

“With rock salt, yeah. And then I tried to exorcise the ones that didn’t run off.” Sarah doesn’t say anything to that, and Jo’s impatient to leave, to go, to do what she can. There’s so much more to do. “Look, you might have noticed there’s an apocalypse going on, so if you want to stay out of it, you’re better off –”

“Take me with you,” Sarah interrupts.

“What?”

Sarah hesitates, steps forward and back, and Jo’s got her knife out, reflecting the sun and the diner behind her, like there might be a fight from a girl who probably just went into Sally’s Diner this morning looking for breakfast.

“I don’t have anywhere to go,” Sarah says. She looks at Jo, not the knife, and something about that makes Jo want to say yes. Her mom’s been gone two weeks. “My dad, he’s – he never came back last month. I don’t think he will. And it’s the end of the world, and you’re going alone – or it looks like you are – and I don’t – I don’t want to die,” she finishes, taking a deep breath as she does.

“ _Cristo_ ,” Jo says, and Sarah blinks, but her eyes stay bright and hopeful.

“I’ll pay for whatever you need,” Sarah says, and that isn’t really why Jo says yes; she’s a hunter and she can take care of herself in every way, but she reaches into the trunk of her car and pulls out one of the amulets Bobby Singer gave her to ward off demons, once upon a lifetime ago before she’d ever seen one of the damn things. “Put this on and we’ll go.”

*

Before she can get in, Sarah has to clear fast food wrappers and a mess of cassette tape cases off the front seat – the car’s pretty much a mess. There are spare bullets and shotgun shells on the floor beneath her feet and the windshield on Jo’s side has a small crack in it, but somehow Sarah feels safer here than she has in months.

The car hums quietly as Jo guns the ignition and the radio plays something old and wailing, the kind of music Sarah’s mother played on lazy Saturdays while her father was out. “It’s not all Beethoven,” her mother would say, and Sarah would giggle and agree and dance around the kitchen, but for the most part she never learned the words or the musicians, just the sounds.

“You live around here?” Jo asks as they pull out onto the street. The town seems quiet, but not ghostly. Sarah remembers Sam telling her once how easy it is for people to act normal after insane things. She remembers her father and his pieces after her mother died.

“There’s a hotel,” Sarah says. “Down the road, I just have a few things there, it was only supposed to be for a week…”

Jo looks at her, and Sarah readies herself for questions. She’s gotten good at answering them, at not crying or letting her voice break, but nothing comes. Jo drives, parks, follows her into the hotel and to the elevator. She keeps one hand near the knife she pulled on Sarah earlier, and she twitches with each _ding_ that announces the next floor. No one else gets on.

“You okay?” Sarah asks when they reach her floor. She knows it’s a stupid question. Demons, rock salt, apocalypse – nothing’s okay.

“Not used to these places,” Jo mutters. She walks beside Sarah, eyeing each door as they pass it. Sarah thinks of Sam and Dean, how afterward she’d wondered if they were all like this.

“I guess you wouldn’t be,” Sarah agrees lightly. “From what I know, hunting doesn’t come with salary and a 401k.”

They arrive at Sarah’s room and she swipes the keycard and opens the door, but Jo stares hard at her, not entering yet. “What do you know about hunting?”

“Not much,” Sarah admits. “I had a run-in with a vengeful spirit a few years back, met a few guys like you.”

Jo’s mouth twitches, some hint, Sarah thinks, of a smile. “So that’s how you knew about salt.”

Sarah nods. “I wasn’t sure. I just hoped, if it worked on one thing…”

“Yeah,” Jo agrees. She steps inside the room, whistling quietly as she takes a look around. It’s not the nicest place Sarah’s ever stayed, and by her father’s standards it’s slumming, but it’s warm and clean and far above everything going on outside.

Jo doesn’t say anything else while Sarah gathers her things, just shuffles around the room opening drawers and cabinets, but when they’re heading back out, Jo speaks up. “Hunters get by on credit card fraud, mostly. Hustling pool. Cards. My mom and I tried it honest for a while, ‘til demons lit up our bar.”

Sarah looks at her for a while, understanding, until Jo straightens up and clears her throat. Sarah wants to press on, but she’s known Jo less than two hours. “So what you’re saying,” she says instead, grinning a little, “is that you really _do_ need me around to buy you dinner and pay for gas.”

Jo scoffs, but there’s that quirk to her lips again like she’s just left of really smiling. “Yeah, right, I’m dying for your company. Let’s go, moneybags.”

“ _Heiress_ , if you have to.”

“Whatever.”

*

On the way out of town, Jo keeps the radio on and her eyes on the road. She feels Sarah watching her and knows it’s real curiosity, nothing like other hunters looking at her, nothing even like the kids she went to school with years and a couple different lifetimes ago; Sarah isn’t looking for signs of weakness.

Somehow, though, that makes Jo really fucking nervous, really fucking _uncomfortable_ , the way men checking her out at the bar or demons holding her by the throat never did.

“So, your mom’s a hunter, too?” Sarah asks when they hit open fields, farmland, leaving suburbia for the things Jo’s a little more familiar with. Heart’s playing Barracuda, and she hates this song. It reminds her of late nights with Ash as he taught her to play poker like a pro, but she sings along anyway.

“Not a good topic,” Sarah says. “Okay, I get it. My dad was an art dealer, that wasn’t fun to talk about, either. So, how about this apocalypse then?”

Eyes on the road, not on the pretty girl next to her who’s probably got nothing worse than a few bumps and bruises from today, no lasting scars, and Jo’s thinking about how quick the roadhouse went up in flames, how long in comparison it’s taking the world to burn out. There are abandoned cars on the road, sure, and TV’s a wasteland for anything but syndication, but there’s still – Jo expected worse, honestly.

Sarah sighs, and then reaches forward to change the station. Jo recognizes the new voice; something she heard during her few weeks at college. She reaches over and turns the stereo off, shoots Sarah a look of _hands off_ that’d make her mother proud.

“Fair enough,” Sarah says. “How about a really simple question: where are we _going_?”

Jo thinks about this one. The best thing to do, she knows, would be to head west, toward Kansas and the last place she saw her mom. Second best would be to meet up with the resistance she knows is out there, hole up and get ready for the worse that must be coming.

Instead – instead, she’s been following the lightning storms, the cattle mutilations, the clouds of black smoke, all leading with certainty toward the things she _can_ fight, all those non-abstract forces of evil. She’s been reading the papers, the ones still in operation, because paranormal activity is as sure as the weather, even now.

“South,” Jo says at last, but leaves it at that before turning the radio back on, popping in her tape of _Zeppelin IV_ and hitting rewind.

“Oh, good,” Sarah says. “I was worried you were going to be vague about it.”

*

At sunset, Jo pulls over in another small town so they can grab a bite to eat. Sarah’s been dozing on and off since mid afternoon. She hasn’t given up on getting Jo to speak full sentences, not by a long shot, but she’s never been on a road trip before and it turns out once the scenery gets old, there isn’t much else to do but sleep.

The place they walk into looks a lot like the one they left behind, without the overturned tables and smell of blood, and it turns Sarah’s appetite, what little one she had, right around.

“Come on,” Jo mutters, because Sarah’s still standing in the doorway, holding her breath. “I want to get a little further before nightfall.” She starts to move toward a booth, but sees Sarah isn’t following. “ _Well_?” Jo asks, raising an eyebrow.

“It’s just,” Sarah hesitates. Everywhere she looks, the people seem normal, not at all like they’d gladly bash her head into any countertops, but that’s how it all seemed this morning, too. “Are we safe here?”

With a roll of her eyes and a huff of breath, Jo stomps back over to her, takes Sarah by the arm. “I told you this morning,” she says, “we’re not safe anywhere.” She tugs again, but not hard, just a soft pull to make Sarah sit down before she slides into the booth across from her. Sarah studies the wrapped silverware and the initials carved into the corner of the table before looking back up at Jo. “But you’ve got me,” Jo adds, and there’s the smallest twinkle to her brown eyes that somehow makes Sarah feel if not safe, _safer_ , even though Jo’s one person with tiny hands and a small arsenal. “And that’s better than most people have right now.”

“Thank you,” Sarah says again, reaching across the table to put her hand on Jo’s, and she tries not to feel too disappointed when the light in Jo’s eyes flickers and disappears as soon as their hands make contact.

“Everyone’s got a job to do,” Jo says, pulling away quick and shrugging. She unwraps her silverware and looks around for a waitress.

The waitress comes around and they order, burgers and fries and Cokes for each of them, and Sarah keeps her chatter to a minimum while they eat. She’s always been a nervous talker, asking all the wrong questions at dinner parties and special auctions before she could help herself, but she holds still until they finish and she pays the check, swatting away the crumpled bills Jo tries to hand over.

Outside, Sarah stops Jo before they get in the car, says her name quietly and then, “Can you teach me?”

The sun’s gone down now, and the sky’s dusky and purple. It’s the same color Sarah used to spend hours trying to mix with paint in her old bedroom, with nothing to show for it in the end but crumpled paper, wasted canvas. But she kept trying.

“Teach you what?” Jo asks.

“How to get through this,” Sarah says. She shifts, shivers as a breeze brushes the hair on her arms. “How to survive. I mean, I know it must’ve taken you years, but I just want to be able to help you like –”

Jo holds up a hand to stop her. Her eyes roam up and down Sarah in a way no one’s ever really looked at her before, as though she’s searching for something but isn’t sure what she’s found, and for a moment Sarah thinks Jo might say something – something with more than seven syllables, even. Instead she turns away, moves toward her side of the car. “Let’s go,” she barks out, and Sarah wants to argue, but she’s in a town she doesn’t know with a girl she somehow trusts, so she does as she’s told.

Once she’s in, Jo guns the engine, but before she pulls away from the diner, she reaches across Sarah and opens the glove compartment. “Here,” she says. “Salt. Holy water. Charms. Crosses, not that there’s much scared of them anymore. I’m covered as much as I can be, all right?” Jo turns her head toward Sarah and she’s fierce, yes, and defiant, but mostly Sarah thinks she looks _tired_.

“Okay,” Sarah says quietly, for now. She sits back in her seat and Jo moves back to hers, and Jo’s tape plays “Stairway to Heaven” as they drive a few more hours toward an out-of-the-way motel, where she helps Jo salt the windows and doors before they settle in to sleep.

*

In the morning, Jo wakes to the smell of coffee and breakfast food, eggs and bacon and pancakes and donuts. Sarah’s set it all out on the table, big Styrofoam containers of food along with three kinds of juice and a small carton of milk. When Jo gives her a sleepy, confused look, Sarah shrugs. “I wasn’t sure what you liked.”

“Could’ve asked,” Jo points out, but she pulls out a chair and sits down at the table.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” Sarah explains, and Jo nods. Jo’s still tired, really, even though they went to sleep almost as soon as they got in last night. She spent a while tossing and turning, but the sound of someone else breathing next to her had her asleep sooner than usual.

They eat in silence, between the two of them managing to finish off all but some of the eggs and one of the jelly donuts. It’s only when Sarah goes to shower and Jo has a minute alone with her coffee that anything sinks in. “Where did you get all of that?” she asks when Sarah comes out of the bathroom. She’s dressed, but there’s a towel around her hair, and she’s wearing blue, fuzzy slippers. “This place isn’t classy enough for breakfast.”

“Or _coffee_ ,” Sarah agrees, sitting down on one of the beds as she starts to dry her hair with the towel. “I asked the girl at the desk if they had anything and she looked at me like I wanted to buy drugs.”

Jo snorts, raises an eyebrow. Then she asks, in a tone too much like her mother’s, “So you went out? By yourself?”

“Uh-huh,” Sarah says. She finishes drying her hair and begins to braid it. “I do that sometimes.”

“You shouldn’t,” Jo says, watching Sarah’s quick fingers work the strands of her long brown hair. “You could get hurt.”

“You’re _welcome_ ,” Sarah says, tying the end of her hair and then gesturing toward the food wrappers still on the table, but she doesn’t sound _angry_ , or offended. She’s grinning a little, and Sarah is, Jo thinks, a perfect example of why she’s never been able to relate to girls her age.

“Thank you,” Jo snaps. “That was real nice of you. But pancakes aren’t worth you getting killed.”

“Next time I’ll just get you up,” Sarah says, but she’s grinning even wider, and her eyes are bright, and it makes something in Jo’s stomach twist. “You can escort me, and hold my hand while I cross the street.”

Jo glares, feeling her face heat up. “Funny. Twelve hours ago you wanted me to teach you, and now you’re ready to just –” she cuts herself off as Sarah raises an eyebrow at her, like she means, _exactly_.

“Jesus,” Jo mutters, then, louder, “Okay, princess. In the interest of me not having to scrape you off the pavement sometime in the near future, I’ll teach you what I can.”

Sarah _beams_. Jo’s skin itches. It’s going to be a long day, so she sucks down more coffee and decides the last donut is rightfully hers.

*

The next few days pass in relative peace. They drive from Massachusetts to Rhode Island, from Rhode Island to Connecticut. The roads are emptier than Sarah’s ever seen them, and the sirens at night are loud and unyielding, but Sarah picks up a few books and a sketchpad in Hartford, and the worst that happens for a while is Jo’s taste in music.

Which there’s something to be said about, but whatever.

It’s not until they reach New York, really, that anything happens at all. Jo’s been following “signs,” which considering the state of things sounds like a lot of nonsense to Sarah, but they’ve only stopped in Norwich for gas and a quick bite to eat when Jo reaches across the table and drags Sarah’s soda away from her before saying, quietly, “Go wait in the car.”

“What?” Sarah asks. “Grace Slick is not paying for this meal.”

Jo stares at her for a minute, looks over Sarah’s shoulder and then back. “Sarah,” she says slowly, “I mean it. Go wait in the car.” She reaches into her pocket, pulls out her keys, and sets them down in front of Sarah. Four days on the road, endless hours in the car, and Jo has refused every one of Sarah’s offers to relieve her at the wheel. “Lock the doors,” Jo adds.

The seriousness of the situation hits her all at once, and Sarah nods, takes the keys, and stands up. Their booth is twelve steps from the door, and each one feels heavy under Sarah’s feet. She keeps her head up and spares a glance for the waitress, whose eyes flash black even as she lets Sarah pass.

As soon as Sarah’s clear of the restaurant the sounds begin, shots and shouting and shattering glass, and without knowing why, Sarah gets in the driver’s instead of the passenger’s side of the car. She guns the ignition, keeps her eyes shut and tries to breathe while she waits.

And waits.

And waits, until finally, there’s a knock on the side window and Sarah clicks the locks.

The first thing she notices is that Jo’s bleeding. “Drive,” Jo barks, but she has to say it twice more before Sarah hears it, before the words make any kind of sense to her.

She drives, and now isn’t the time to remember she barely has a license, because it turns out her lead foot is good in certain situations, this being one of them. She drives for what feels like hours, for what might be minutes, afraid to look at Jo, afraid not to, settling on the road in front of her and brief glances at Jo from the mirror.

“Okay, here,” Jo says, and Sarah turns the car so quickly Jo’s thrown sideways. “ _Fuck_.”

“Shit, shit, _sorry_ ,” Sarah stammers, and Jo grunts out a couple more curses.

Sarah parks, then takes a full look at Jo, and there’s – a lot of blood. “ _Shit_ ,” she says again.

“It’s fine,” Jo tells her, but she hisses when Sarah tries to touch her. “In back, there’s – stuff. Black box, can’t miss it.” Sarah nods, and digs around in back before she comes up with a small black box. She pops the lock open, and can’t help laughing when she has a look inside. “Whiskey?” she asks.

“Trust me, it helps.”

“Yeah, I bet.” She picks through the bandages, hesitates. Most of the blood seems to be coming from Jo’s arms, like something nasty grabbed at her. “We need to clean you up first,” she says.

“Hand me the whiskey.”

“Jo –”

Jo’s bloody, but her gaze is steady as ever. “Hand me the whiskey, and go get us a room.”

“I can’t just leave you by –”

Jo snatches the whiskey out of Sarah’s hand and cuts her off. “I’ll be fine for five minutes, promise. _Go_.”

Sarah sighs, but she does as she’s told. She shoves a wad of cash at the desk attendant and grabs a room key and pulls Jo out of the car, walking right next to her even as Jo insists she can get there just fine by herself, thanks.

In the room, she makes Jo sit on one of the beds and then wets a wash cloth and starts cleaning her up. Jo’s shirt is torn half to shreds, anyway, so Jo sits in just her bra and tank top while Sarah works, and Sarah sees goosebumps form on her tiny arms. None of the cuts are deep, but there are more of them than Sarah thought, and it’s a while before she finishes bandaging Jo up. Jo’s been bitching the whole time about how she can do these things _herself, really_ , but when she gets back from changing her clothes, she tells Sarah, “You’re a pretty good nurse, you know.”

“Well, I’m a crappy artist, so I have to make up for these things somehow.”

“You’re not so bad,” Jo says, and her face goes the slightest shade of pink before she amends, “I mean, from what I’ve seen.”

Sarah shakes her head, asks, “So what happened in there?”

Jo shrugs, and her eyes shift away from Sarah. “Just demons having fun. Everyone got out all right this time, though.”

_This time_. “That’s good,” Sarah says, refraining from saying that Jo’s definition of all right is clearly different from Sarah’s. Then she asks, “How could you tell they were demons?”

And then, Jo goes quiet for a long, long time. Sarah can hear the leaking faucet in the bathroom, a car alarm going off somewhere in the distance. Jo’s face goes _still_ , and Sarah wants to apologize, but if there’s something she can learn about demons, some sense she can develop, she wants to know.

“Personal experience,” Jo says at last, and Sarah isn’t sure what she means, but she nods and lets it go. “Think we’re safe – I mean, decent – here for tonight?”

Jo takes a seat on the opposite bed. “Salt the windows and the doors,” she says. “Then, yeah, I think we’ll be all right.” She leans back on the bed, reaches for the remote, and flips on the TV. She leaves the salting to Sarah, and doesn’t look at her at all for a while.

Sarah does what Jo asks, making sure every line of salt is perfect. She listens to the sounds from the TV, an old episode of _I Love Lucy_ , and tries not to think about how differently today could’ve gone.

*

Jo knows, even if she’d never admit it to Sarah, that yesterday at the diner was a close call. The scratches on her arms will heal fine, and the bruises on her ribs aren’t much, but a few more demons and a few slower steps, and she knows things could’ve gone much worse.

It scares her a little, that when she thinks about what could’ve happened, the first thing she thinks about is what could’ve happened to _Sarah_.

In the morning, Sarah wakes her up early, eight o’clock and the sun pouring through the flimsy curtains, with a hesitant smile, a handful of Advil, and a, “Come on, sunshine, we both need to eat, and I’m not allowed out by myself.” Jo grumbles and groans as she pulls herself out of bed, but there’s something warm in her chest when she looks at Sarah, all messy pigtails and clean clothes and a shine to her that Jo wants to protect with everything she has left.

It scares the hell out of her, so she throws on her cleaner pair of jeans, ties up her hair, tucks her knife into her pocket, and they head out to the closest gas station to grab what they want.

Sarah pays, like always, and Jo sees the guy at the counter glancing down Sarah’s shirt anything but subtly. Jo smiles fierce at him, and pushes Sarah out the door.

“Demon?” Sarah asks when they’re out, not sounding like she’s particularly worried. “No,” Jo says, and she’s getting tired of blushing like a schoolgirl with a crush, but she’s pretty close to that description. “Nah,” she admits. “Just some creep checking you out.”

Sarah’s eyes widen a little, light turning them green-gold and pretty, and she twists open her soda and takes a sip. “So it’s not just demons you’re keeping me safe from, huh?” Sarah asks. “I’m okay with that.”

Jo shakes her head, keeps walking to the car. “Next stop’s not too far from here,” she tells Sarah. “Might be a haunting, might be nothing, but it beats cruising diners for a bit.”

“Okay,” Sarah says, almost like she’s not sure that’s the right answer. Jo figures that’s fair, since she guesses she’s prickly, to say the least. She’s never had to take care of anyone but herself before, and she isn’t convinced she’s doing all that well at it.

Once they’re in the car, Jo tells her, “You can just hang around at a hotel, if you want. I’m fine by myself.”

“No way,” Sarah says. “You aren’t getting rid of me like that.” She smiles at Jo, and there’s something shy about it, different from before. “Besides, I kind of liked playing getaway driver.”

“Jesus,” Jo mutters. “Just don’t crash my car, all right?”

“I’m still kind of rich,” Sarah says easily. “I’ll buy you a new one.”

*

On the way to Buffalo, Jo talks, actually _talks_. Sarah keeps her eyes on her sketchpad, erases and redraws line after line, so maybe Jo won’t know just how intently she’s listening.

“My first hunt was something like this. Spirit of some bastard serial killer, torturing and murdering girls even after he was dead. I was so excited to be off on my own, so sure I’d –” Jo’s voice cuts off, and Sarah can’t help looking up. Jo’s mouth is set in _that_ way, the one she always gets when she’s done talking, when she feels she’s said too much, but Sarah can’t let her stop there.

“What happened?” she asks, quietly. The sun’s high in the sky and unsurprisingly, they’re the only ones on the road for miles.

“Nearly got myself killed,” Jo says. “I would’ve, if a couple of friends of mine hadn’t shown up.”

“That’s lucky,” Sarah says. She means _I’m glad you’re okay, I’m glad you’re here, I know you’re smarter than all that now_ , but she doesn’t say it.

Jo nods. “I was so scared,” she says, glancing at Sarah for half a second. “Sure I’d die right there.”

“You didn’t, though,” Sarah points out. “You lived to fight another day, and all that.”

“I was stupid,” Jo says, shaking her head. She sets her eyes back on the road, and her grip tightens on the steering wheel. “Still am, maybe.”

Sarah’s quiet for a while, and so is Jo. They pass the _exit, two miles_ sign and Sarah says, “You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever met.”

Jo snorts. “You’d say that to anyone who saved you,” she says.

“No,” Sarah says. “I wouldn’t.”

Jo looks at her for a long time then, long enough that if the road wasn’t empty, they would’ve hit something or other. Then her gaze shifts, and she reaches over to turn the radio back on before Sarah can say anything else. Sarah tears out the page in her sketchbook and starts over.

*

The advantage to the end of the world, Jo guesses, is that all the disguises and fake IDs normally necessary to hunting become obsolete. Everyone’s too busy worrying about the dead rising, the lightning storms and demons and everything else that’s come out of the woodwork, to bother with a tiny blonde girl asking questions about dead high school kids.

It seems like a pretty straightforward case. A sophomore girl committed suicide a few years ago in one of the locker rooms after her boyfriend cheated on her, and now her spirit’s been brutally murdering unfaithful kids and teachers.

“This is what you call straightforward?” Sarah asks, indicating the numerous photographs of kids with their hearts ripped out, wide eyes and blood everywhere. “This is horrible. All those poor kids.”

Jo shrugs. “It’s terrible, yeah. But ghosts are easy. Find the remains, burn ‘em, finish the job.”

Sarah sighs. She points to another photograph, one of Cassie Russo herself. She was pretty, once, in an unfinished sort of way. “We’re going to have to dig this poor girl up, aren’t we?”

Jo nods. “You can hold the flashlight,” she says brightly.

“My favorite part.”

Of course, things are never as simple as they seem. They burn the girl’s bones, but the next day there’s another murder, another kid left heartless. They check out the locker room again and the EMF meter goes crazy, screeching and squealing, and Jo has just enough time to say, “ _Sarah_ ,” before all the doors shut and lock on them.

It isn’t the girl, this time, isn’t just one spirit. It’s half a dozen of them, and Jo recognizes the victims’ faces, all the ones Cassie’s ghost killed. They swoop in on them and Jo’s standing in front of Sarah with her shotgun ready, but nothing happens at all. The ghosts pass them right over and things get crazy for a while, benches hurled against the walls and debris flying everywhere, but from what Jo can tell it’s just the spirits against each other, battling it out. Their anger makes her skin hum, makes her hair stand on end, but it’s not directed at them.

Finally, there’s a blinding flash of light, howls and screeches like Jo’s never heard, followed by a sudden silence. The doors open again, and she and Sarah carefully stumble out, brushing off their clothes and shaking the dust out of their hair.

“It’s never simple, is it?” Sarah asks when they’re clear of the high school. “You can’t treat ghosts like anything but people.”

“No,” Jo says. “No, I guess you can’t.”

Sarah shakes her head. “Some life you’ve chosen here,” she says.

Jo tilts her head up to look at Sarah. “Any better ideas?” she asks.

“No,” Sarah says. “No, I guess not.” She wipes a fleck of blood off her cheek and grins, and Jo thinks she looks fucking beautiful.

*

They drive for days with nothing different but the radio stations, the coffee at truck stops and diners, the number of abandoned cars on the road before them. Sarah reads through all those classic novels she never got around to and all the women’s magazines that somehow still circulate. She sits in the car with her pencil and eraser and tries for the sky, for the road, for _Jo_ , her angles and pretty mouth, her tangled hair as it steadily falls out of her ponytail holder.

There are a few demons in Pittsburgh, and another set on the edges of West Virginia. One grabs Sarah by the arm on her way back from the restroom at a gas station, and she feels the charm around her neck heat up, sees the glow of black eyes, but she’s barely opened her mouth to scream when Jo’s right there, shooting the thing full of rock salt. She grips Sarah by the shoulders until she stops shaking, murmurs the exorcism ritual over a girl who looks younger than either of them.

In Ohio, Jo pulls off the road at two o’clock on a Wednesday, shuts off the engine and says, “Come on,” before she gets out of the car.

Sarah follows, and when she gets out, Jo’s grabbing things out of the trunk of her car – a handgun, a shotgun, bullets, and half a dozen empty beer bottles. While Jo sets the bottles up along the ground Sarah leans against the car and waits.

“Come here,” Jo says at last, and Sarah follows. The shotgun is by Jo’s feet, but she’s holding the handgun, nine millimeters of cold black steel. She hasn’t seen this one much, except when Jo takes it out to clean it; Jo’s told her about werewolves and shape shifters, things that don’t go down without a silver bullet to the heart, but Sarah’s never seen anything like that.

Jo hands her the gun, and Sarah hesitates. She’s asked to be taught, she knows. She’s gone in on every hunt from Gardner to here, stayed close to Jo and done what she can. But this is different.

“You’ll be fine,” Jo says. There’s no impatience in her voice, nothing like the first time Sarah asked for her help, and that – not a willingness to learn, though there’s that, and not the thought that someday Jo might not be around anymore to keep her safe – is what makes Sarah let Jo take her hand in hers and show her where to put her fingers, how to hold her arms and wrists, how to position her legs and steady herself.

It’s slow going. She misses the first five bottles and grazes the sixth, but Jo doesn’t sigh or roll her eyes, just says, “Okay, all right. Try again,” before showing her how to reload.

Sarah doesn’t let herself get discouraged. She’s been a bad artist, been conned out of art deals. She’s seen her mother die, had her world turned upside down by a ghost in a painting and a boy from out of town. She’s been abandoned by her father.

She shoots, and Jo stands behind her saying _higher, lower, careful, almost_ , and at last – sunset behind them and her arms hands legs _ears_ all aching – the sound of shattering glass accompanies the sound of the shot going off.

“You did it,” Jo says, and Sarah can’t tell which one of them is more proud. She jumps, grins, and when she turns around Jo’s grinning right back at her, no hint of anything else in her eyes.

They practice until the sun goes down and it gets too dark to see, and Sarah breaks a few more bottles before she hands the gun off to Jo, and Jo lets loose and shatters the remaining bottles.

Jo tosses the weapons back in the trunk, leaving the rifle for another day, and they sit on the hood of the car for a while to catch their breath. “My first time,” Jo tells her, “I didn’t hit a single thing. For hours. My dad was telling me what to do, and my mom was behind us shouting how I was too young, too small, shouldn’t – but finally, I got it just right. Hit ‘em all.” Jo pauses, jumps off the hood of the car. “My ma wanted to be mad, I know she did. But she and my dad, neither of them could quit smiling.”

Sarah’s smiling, too. “I bet you were great.”

Jo smiles back, but it’s her small smile, the one Sarah always wants to push to the edges. She shrugs and says, “Yeah, sure.”

Sarah stands up. “Come on,” she says, grabbing the keys off the hood of the car. “I know exactly where we’re going next.”

“Yeah?” Jo asks, and despite the dimming light, Sarah can tell she has an eyebrow quirked in challenge. “And where’s that?”

“To celebrate.”

*

The thing about Jo is, she never really gets drunk. She’ll have a beer now and again; she’s played drinking games with unsuspecting hunters, and she likes a Jack and Coke with just enough ice. But she doesn’t get sloppy or messy, and she doesn’t go _out_.

But tonight, tonight is different already. She’s revved up from shooting, from watching Sarah shatter glass bottles in an abandoned spot of road, from – from realizing that maybe, maybe, they’ll be able to live like this for a while. _Both_ of them.

Seeing as it’s the end of the world, the bar they pull into in Portsmouth is pretty packed, all sorts of tired eyes, set faces, dust on the countertops and a weakly flashing “open” sign. But it’s not _quiet_ , not like the way the roadhouse was most nights; there’s still pool and people doing shots, couples necking in corners.

They walk in and Jo’s aware of Sarah right next to her, walking close enough to reach out and touch if she wanted – needed. Somehow, though, Jo senses they won’t have that sort of problem tonight.

At the counter they each grab a stool and Jo orders a beer. Sarah gives her a look. “What?” Jo demands.

“I take you out for drinks and that’s what you order?” Sarah looks at the bartender, a grizzly-looking guy with a scar on his neck and blank, grey eyes. She grins at him, all teeth, and says, “Give me two of the frilliest, girliest drinks that you have on the menu. Please.”

The guy cracks a smile and says, “Right up, Miss,” before he heads off, and Jo looks away from the warmth of Sarah’s smile. She can’t dodge it for long, though, because there’s nothing in this bar that she’d like to look at instead.

“Was your bar like this at all?” Sarah asks when the guy returns with their drinks. Jo’s is bright pink, something blended, she thinks probably a margarita. There’s a little blue umbrella in it, sugar around the glass. Sarah takes a drink of hers, and after a minute, Jo squares her shoulders and goes for a small sip. It’s not bad, but it’s – fruity. And chock full of tequila.

“No,” Jo says to Sarah’s question. “No, not really. Once word got around, it was mostly a place for hunters to hang out, have a drink or three, and get on their way.”

“Oh,” Sarah says. “That sounds…” She can’t seem to find the right words. There’s dirt on her chin and the only make-up she’s wearing is lip gloss, and Jo can’t stop herself from talking. “I used to listen to all their stories. Ghosts, demons, werewolves -” she takes a sip of her drink, then another. “God, I wanted to be a part of that so bad. Get my hands on something.”

She goes quiet, thinking of nights up past her bedtime listening to Ray and Joel and Patricia, all those hunters, all dead now, whose stories she wanted to be her own. She thinks of the legends of John Winchester, recollections of her father. They’re dead, every one of them.

She takes another drink.

Sarah says, “When I was a kid, my parents decided I was going to be this great artist. I don’t know how they got it into their head. It was like they loved me too much to tell the difference between good art and a kid’s scribbles, but for years, they’d introduce me to all these famous artists – painters, sculptors, anyone who’d stick me on their knee and tell me to keep going. They paid for tutoring sessions, everything. At the end of it all, I got a degree in art history, and I…” Sarah laughs, looking down at her drink. “I can barely draw Mickey Mouse.”

“You do all right,” Jo says with a shake of her head. Sarah’s not great, even Jo can tell that much, but she likes the few minutes she has to flip through Sarah’s sketchbook. There’s something about the way that Sarah draws _her_ that always makes her pause, makes her want to ask.

“What’s your point?” Jo asks.

“I don’t know,” Sarah says. She laughs again, and Jo strains to hear it. “I guess that – I’m glad you got to do what you wanted to do. Even if it’s an incredibly _insane_ occupation.”

“Saved your ass a couple times over,” Jo points out, smirking.

“Yeah,” Sarah agrees. She puts her hand over Jo’s on the bar. Her nails are worn down and jagged, just like Jo’s, and there’s still a trace of blue ink on her thumb. “Yeah, it has.”

Jo feels herself flush, and she pulls away to pick up her drink. She clears her throat. “So,” she says, searching for anything. “Pool?”

Sarah’s eyes light up. “Thought you’d never ask,” she says.

*

Sarah hustles Jo pretty shamelessly at pool, but Jo’s a good sport about it. She buys them shots once their drinks are gone, and Jo’s flushed pink and grinning and Sarah’s never seen her look this at ease, almost _happy_. She hopes like nothing else this won’t be the only time they have moments like this, because Jo deserves more.

They stay at the bar a few more hours, winning a couple rounds of pool against other patrons, lording over the jukebox until they start getting dirty looks – Sarah finds the most bubblegum tunes on the menu, because she’s _drunk_ and _giddy_ , and she learned how to shoot a gun today. She never thought she wanted that.

There are a lot of things she never thought she wanted.

It’s near midnight by the time they head out, full moon lighting their way to the car, cool breeze blowing their messy hair. Sarah stops Jo at the car so they can take a minute, so she can breathe the fresh air, stare at the sky. There are so many stars out tonight she feels dizzy with it.

That might be the tequila, though.

“So, where’d you learn to play pool like that?” Jo asks after a minute. She’s standing close, her arm brushing Sarah’s. “You get tutored in that, too?”

“Not quite,” Sarah says with a laugh. Truth is, the guys Sarah dated in college were drinkers, barflies, and one of them taught her. It was the best time she spent with him, really, but her type has improved since then. She looks at Jo.

“You’re good,” Jo says, looking back at her. “Should’ve told me before that was one of your useful skills.” She’s slurring a little, grinning, and Sarah thinks she’s kind of adorable.

“I’ll be sure to add it to my resume,” Sarah tells her.

“Yeah,” Jo says. “Hey -” and then Jo’s leaning up, moving in, tilting her head to kiss her, and Sarah thinks it isn’t unexpected, not exactly. Jo’s lips are soft against hers, and Sarah has just enough time to lift her hand to pull Jo a little closer, to see where this goes, before Jo draws back.

“Shit,” Jo breathes, cool air making her breath visible. “Sorry, I -”

“No,” Sarah says, “no, it’s –” but Jo shakes her head. “I’m drunk,” she mutters as she backs up, although all at once she sounds sober. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

“I don’t mind,” Sarah says, and that’s – well, that’s an understatement.

Jo backs up further then, and Sarah wants to hold her gaze, pull her back three steps and finish what Jo started – what started, sometime, in a diner six weeks ago –, but Jo says, “Let’s find a hotel. I’m gonna crash.”

“Maybe I should drive.”

“No.” Jo shakes her head again. “No, I’ve got it.”

Sarah thinks about arguing, thinks about Jo’s lips on hers, Jo’s hand over hers on the gun, Jo at her side all night. But they’re drunk and Jo’s clearly freaked, and it’s late in the middle of nowhere.

“Okay,” Sarah says. “Let’s get out of here.”

Jo keeps the music loud until they reach the hotel, and she passes out as soon as they get in. Sarah salts the windows and the doors and keeps the lamp by her bed on for hours, knowing she’s nowhere close to sleep.

*

Jo’s the first one awake the next morning – her hangover makes sure of that. She spends twenty minutes in the bathroom puking up tequila and another ten brushing her teeth, then stands in the shower until the water runs cold. It doesn’t really help, and she’s shivering as she dries off and puts on fresh clothes, but at least she’s awake.

She spares a glance at Sarah’s sleeping form on the opposite bed, her mouth open and her hair a mess, covers drawn up tight around her, before grabbing her keys and heading out.

There’s a coffee place ten minutes down the road and she has that and breakfast in less than twenty minutes, but she takes her time going back. She fills up the gas tank, stocks up on Sarah’s favorite snacks (Sarah prefers Three Musketeers to Snickers, Oreos to everything else), buys a paper and a couple of magazines.

She cleans out the car, vacuums, wipes the dust and dirt off the windows.

Maybe she had more tequila than she’s ever allowed herself before, but Jo remembers last night just fine. She remembers the warmth of the bar, the pool cue in her hands, the feel of Sarah’s lips against hers.

God.

She remembers, too, drawing back, apologizing. Remembers the ache in her chest, how much she didn’t _want_ to stop.

Three minutes from the hotel, Jo pulls over, takes out her phone, and calls her mom. Ellen answers on the second ring, and for the first time in Jo’s life, it isn’t an immediate comfort. They talk; it’s only been a week or so, but Jo listens to her mother’s voice, the sound of her lighting cigarettes and stubbing them out, the noise in the background.

“Your friend hanging in okay?” Ellen asks at last, when Jo’s let the silence sit for too long.

“She’s fine,” Jo says. “She’s great,” she adds, like a confession. “Taught her to shoot yesterday,” she says before she can help herself, wanting to share with _someone_. She flinches then, anticipating her mother’s scorn, that _Joanna Beth_ of ages past, but that isn’t what happens.

“Sounds like you want her to stick around,” is what Ellen says instead. She exhales, and Jo can see the cigarette smoke pooling out of her mouth slowly, easy, practically smells the Pall Malls sure as she can smell the new air freshener she just hooked around the mirror. She thinks of breathing Sarah in last night, real, girly shampoo, subtle hint of perfume under smoke and gunpowder.

“Yeah,” Jo says finally. She starts the engine back up, starts back toward the hotel. “Yeah, Mom, I do.”

*

Sarah wakes up to the smell of coffee, to the scent of breakfast and the sound of Jo saying her name.

“It’s cold, sorry,” Jo says of breakfast when Sarah sits down at their little table, and Sarah hears the apology for something else, too – for last night, maybe. 

She shakes her head and smiles. “It’s fine,” she says. “Thank you.”

Jo watches her eat while she sips coffee and twists her knife in her tiny hands. “I talked to my mom,” she says when Sarah finishes.

“How is she?” Sarah asks. 

“Good,” Jo says, with a look that lets Sarah know that wasn’t the response she expected. But the longer they’re alone together, the more Sarah wants to know. “She says there’s a hunt down in Atlantic City, if we’re up for the drive.”

Sarah hears the _we_ , and she wants to comment on it. She wants to lean over and kiss the coffee breath off Jo’s mouth, wants to be daring, spontaneous.

Instead she grins, and then tosses back the last of her own coffee. It’s weak like always, too sweet, not the gourmet coffee of home brewed fresh every morning, and some days Sarah thinks she could drink her coffee like this for – for a while, at least.

It scares her a little, maybe. Maybe not as much as it should.

“Can I drive?” Sarah asks, and Jo snorts and rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t say no.

*

They spend the next few days on country roads, making targets out of beer cans and old tires while Jo teaches Sarah how to use the shotgun. The butt of the gun hits Sarah the first few times after she fires, and Jo sees the bruise there later, purple and dark, but at the end of three days Sarah can hit with decent accuracy, better than Jo could’ve asked, would’ve expected from a girl she found hiding in a diner.

“You’re doing great,” Jo keeps telling her, and she wants to say so much more, but she can’t keep her eyes off the little drops of sweat that roll from Sarah’s neck and down her tank top, on the fire in Sarah’s eyes every time she hits a target, on the steady way she holds her weapon. She wants to tell Sarah how brave she is, how amazing, but the words stick to her tongue and instead she just _looks_ , even if she has to squint in the sun to do it.

On the third day, a rainstorm cuts their practice short, and Sarah makes Jo stop for hot chocolate at a little shop in Wilmington that’s somehow stayed open all this time. Sarah runs in for it, and when she gets back to the car she’s soaked but _happy_ , and there’s a dot of whipped cream on her bottom lip that Jo wants to chase, wants –

“You’re no good to me if you get pneumonia,” Jo points out grumpily, reaching forward to turn up the heat. She realizes with a start that it’s almost summer.

“It would be an interesting bit of irony to die like that now, though,” Sarah says brightly, but Jo just scowls. “Kidding,” Sarah says, like she gets it, that it’s really not _funny_. She hands Jo her hot chocolate, and takes a sip from her own cup. “I’ve always wanted to be a hundred and two.”

Jo’s hot chocolate scalds her tongue, but she drinks more of it anyway. “Hunters don’t live very long,” she says quietly.

Rain pounds on the window faster than the windshield wipers can keep up with, and Sarah shivers next to her. “Spare me the speech, okay?” she says, her voice sounding tight, entirely unlike anything Jo’s heard from her in weeks.

_It’s true_ , Jo almost says, but doesn’t, because if she said that she’d have to follow it up with _but I don’t really want it to be, anymore._

“Thanks for the cocoa,” she says instead, and the look Sarah gives her says that’s almost enough.

*

In Atlantic City there are demons, more than Sarah’s ever seen at once. One grabs her by the throat before she can shoot it full of rock salt; another yanks at her hair and hisses like some kind of animal. The Latin she memorized feels thick on her tongue, foreign and dusty, but when she pulls the trigger she feels _right_ , and Jo’s there beside her, behind her, around – turning her head to ask _are you okay?_ and smiling so brightly when the answer is, more or less, _yes_.

The first fight at some rundown casino takes two hours, maybe three, but at the end of it Sarah can feel every bone in her body – every bone _aching_ – like she never has before. Her heart’s beating quick and her head’s throbbing and there’s blood on her arms, legs, hers and Jo’s, but the last thing she can think about is sleeping.

Five miles from there, Sarah pulls the car over so Jo can call her mother and tell her everything’s going okay, so far. “She’s fine, Mom,” Sarah hears Jo say, and there’s a warmth to Jo’s voice that Sarah wants to hold close to her ear and let echo.

Ten miles down the road, Jo buys a bottle of whiskey and Sarah picks out a hotel. They strip down to their jeans and tank tops and fix each other up, and the whiskey hums in Sarah’s veins, dulling the aches and making every press of Jo’s fingers on her skin feel that much better.

There’s whiskey on Jo’s breath, and she’s talking. “Think if anyone else knew what I’d dragged you into, they’d think I was crazy, and maybe I am. But you were great tonight.”

“I had a good teacher,” Sarah says. The clock radio’s playing softly on the nightstand behind them, some girlish song Jo hasn’t actually turned off yet.

“Maybe,” Jo says. She’s all patched up, and they have matching bandages on their shoulders, and Jo finished with Sarah ten minutes ago but they’re still sitting close. Sarah can’t think of any reason to move.

In the last two months, Sarah has figured out that there isn’t much about Jo she doesn’t like. She can be stubborn, and cranky, and her taste in music is kind of appalling, but mostly – mostly, Sarah can’t regret any of what’s happened, if Jo’s sitting next to her.

It’s that, maybe, that makes Sarah tilt her head down toward Jo’s – or maybe it’s the way Jo’s looking at her, the way no one has since Sam Winchester (and even then, the memory’s so faded Sarah’s not even sure if it was ever real).

Sarah kisses Jo, soft at first, slow, and Jo’s mouth opens in a breath, a small sound escaping her before she can stop it. She pulls back after a minute, enough to see Jo up close, the surprise in her eyes and the part of her lips.

“Jesus,” Jo breathes out, so quiet Sarah can only just hear. “You don’t have –” she starts, but Sarah kisses her again. Harder this time, bringing her hand up to catch in Jo’s hair, the strands soft despite years of cheap shampoo. Jo’s lips part again and she kisses back, a noise in her throat almost like a growl, and Sarah nearly laughs.

She doesn’t, though. They stay that way for what could be hours, could be minutes, Jo’s hands tight on Sarah’s arms as Sarah kisses down Jo’s neck and shoulders, over scratches and bruises and birthmarks. They stay there, close and whiskey-warm, until the ache in Sarah’s joints pushes past the alcohol and she has to draw back. “God, I’m beat,” she says.

“Go to bed,” Jo says automatically, even though her hair’s tangled up from Sarah’s fingers and her lips are red from kissing. She drops her hands from Sarah’s arms, flushing as she does. “You’re drunk,” she says. “Go on.”

Sarah wants to tell her she isn’t that drunk, but it can wait. “Will you –” she starts.

“Windows and doors,” Jo says. “Yeah, I got it.” She teases, mouth tilted in a sleepy grin, “I’m the professional here, remember?”

Sarah wants to kiss her again, but she waits. There’s time.

*

It takes a week, but by the time they leave Atlantic City – bruised, sleep-deprived, and feeling a few years older at least – they’ve exorcised every demon in a fifty-mile radius. Jo rubs her sprained wrist, leans her head against the passenger window, and watches Sarah drive.

Since the first night, they haven’t done anything with their few hours of rest time but watch old movies (Sarah likes the classics, Greta Garbo and Cary Grant, and Jo likes that Sarah never stops her from making sarcastic commentary), and neither one of them has mentioned what happened – but Jo’s been thinking about it. It’s _all_ , besides shotgun shells and Latin verses and quick stitches and keeping them alive, she’s been thinking about.

The sun’s rising when they reach Bridgeton, pink and blue and yellow, the colors Sarah uses in all of her sketchbooks. They’re starting to fill up the backseat, right alongside Jo’s true crime novels, and the drawings aren’t any good but Jo – Jo doesn’t want to lose them.

In Salem, Sarah pulls into a hotel parking lot and they get out of the car and grab their bags. It’s a chilly morning for June, and Jo watches the wind blow the hair back from Sarah’s neck before she says, “Sarah.”

Sarah turns to her, bag in hand and a sleepy look to her eyes. “Yeah,” she says. And Jo has things she wants to say, big things, sappy girlish things she’s never said or wanted to say to anybody. Before the words can spill out, though, awkward and blustering and uneven, she leans up and kisses Sarah. It isn’t like before, stumbling and drunken, or the next time, surprised and eager. It’s brief, but sure, and it’s close enough to what Jo’s trying to say.

“You know,” Sarah says when Jo finishes, with a look that says she knows it all, everything Jo means, “I think even hunters are entitled to a little vacation time now and again. What do you say?”

Jo knows this isn’t strictly true, that hunting is less a career than a life, and there’s no ditching it; it _follows_ you. But she smiles and says, “I’ve never really seen the ocean, you know,” and Sarah drops her bag to kiss her again.

They get a room, and it’s cheap and impersonal as everywhere else they’ve been, but Jo doesn’t care. Her mouth is on Sarah’s the second they reach the room, and her hands are working at Sarah’s shirt and the button of Sarah’s jeans.

“I know it’s the end of the world,” Sarah says, even as she lets Jo push her down on the tiny bed, “but foreplay is still nice.”

Jo snorts, laughs so hard she loses her balance and lands right on top of Sarah, but she gives in and slows down – because Sarah’s all she’s got between here and Kansas City, because Sarah’s all she wants, because she _likes_ Sarah the way she’s never liked anyone.

She gives in and goes slow, mapping every bruise and bump, every line and contour, paying no attention to the sun rising outside or the rest of the world coming awake. She doesn’t have to, because there’s time.

Sarah salts the doors and windows and they sleep, finally. It isn’t the dreamless sleep of normal people; Jo’s seen enough in the last week alone to leave her jolting awake half a dozen times, but when she does, Sarah’s right there, all warmth and comfort and everything Jo never knew she wanted, needed.

“So,” Sarah says quietly, in the last hour before sunset when they’re just waking up, “California or Florida?”

*

Florida is hot, and muggy, and they don’t even hit the beach until the third day in because they stumble on a haunting in Jackson, but Sarah loves every second of it. They both get tan, and they come back to the hotel every day with sand between their toes and the scent of saltwater on their skin.

“I love it here,” Jo admits after a week, her hair tied back and bleached an even lighter blonde from days in the sun. She’s wearing cutoffs and boots, because Jo refuses to wear anything between boots and going barefoot, and they’re out on the balcony of the hotel, actual _hotel_ , that Sarah picked out.

“You don’t miss hunting?” Sarah asks. She’s sketching, purple seashells and the ocean and Jo’s feet covered in sand, but she glances up at that.

“Every second,” Jo says. “Still got salt on the doors and a knife under our mattress, but – we should keep doing this, you know?”

“The beach gets old eventually,” Sarah points out, even though it never has for her. She remembers summers in the Bahamas, every minute spent swimming and snorkeling and even surfing, despite any true coordination.

“Will this?” Jo asks then, and right away Sarah hears it, that they aren’t talking about hunting or vacations, not exclusively.

“No,” Sarah says immediately. She doesn’t need a second to think about it, about her old life and what she’s lost – she wouldn’t take it back now if she could. “No, it won’t.”

Jo smiles at her, showing teeth and an overbite, and Sarah thinks it’s better than anything else she’s ever seen. She thinks, right then, that she could do this much longer than a while.


End file.
